Kahana vs. Kartra: Understanding the Differences

Last updated on Jul 20, 2024

Looking for a way to monetize, engage, and grow your community? See how Kahana vs. Kartra compare for features, price, and creator support.

How does Kartra work?

Kartra is an all-in-one marketing platform designed to help businesses build, launch, and sell their digital products and services. Here's a quick rundown of how it works:

Create an account: The first step is to create an account on the Kartra platform. There are several pricing tiers to choose from depending on your needs, starting at $99/month.
Build your website: Kartra provides an easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builder, allowing you to create a professional-looking website without any coding knowledge.
Create your products: Kartra allows you to create a variety of digital products, such as online courses, membership sites, and digital downloads. You can also create sales pages and funnels to sell your products.
Set up payment processing: Kartra integrates with various payment processors, such as Stripe and PayPal, allowing you to accept payments from your customers.
Automate your marketing: Kartra provides a range of marketing automation tools, such as email marketing, SMS messaging, and marketing campaigns, to help you reach and engage with your audience.
Manage your leads and customers: Kartra provides tools to manage your leads and customers, including contact management, tagging, and segmentation.
Analyze your results: Kartra provides analytics and reporting features to help you track your performance and make data-driven decisions.

How does Kahana work?

Kahana is an easy-to-use platform that allows creators and experts to collaborate and monetize knowledge and content. Here's a brief overview of how it operates:

Create a Kahana account: The first step is to sign up for a free account on the platform. Once you've created an account, you can start creating monetized hubs immediately.
Organize your content: You can curate existing content or create new content directly on Kahana hubs. You can add different media types, such as text, images, videos, and more, to your hub.
Set up payment processing: Stripe is utilized to establish payment processing on Kahana, allowing you to accept credit card payments from your subscribers.
Monetize your content: The main method of monetizing your content on Kahana is by charging for access to your hubs. You can create a hub, which is a collection of content that you can curate and set a price on. You can offer one-time payment or recurring payment plans.
Collaborate with others: Kahana is a collaborative platform, so you can collaborate with other creators to create a hub, share content, and split revenue.
Manage your subscribers: Kahana provides various features to manage your subscribers, including tracking growth, viewing details, and managing payments.

What are the differences between Kahana and Kartra?

There are several significant differences between Kahana and Kartra.

Design

Kahana is designed to be fast and easy to use. It allows you to quickly create digital products based on existing resources and information, while Kartra provides all-in-one functionality for your business as a whole, such as lead generation, website creation, and help desk.

Creating digital products

Kartra is primarily designed to host and sell your products, while Kahana helps you create and sell your digital product. Kahana allows you to curate all your best content, information and files and put them into a single hub, which is a collection of knowledge that you can charge access to.

Types of products

Kahana allows you to create dynamic products that can be updated easily by adding or removing content, videos, or files. In contrast, Kartra focuses on static digital products such as downloads and courses that are more difficult to update.

Types of revenue

Kahana is geared toward generating recurring subscription revenue, while Kartra is focused on providing sales from one-time payments.

Pricing

Firstly, Kartra is a pay-to-play platform with a minimum cost of $99 per month, while Kahana is completely free. This means that you can sign up and create and sell your digital products without paying any fees.

Why do people choose Kahana over Kartra?

People may choose Kahana over Kartra for several reasons:

Price: One of the most significant differences between Kahana and Kartra is the cost. Kahana is a free platform, while Kartra starts at $99 per month. This makes Kahana a more accessible option for creators who are just starting and may not have a large budget for a digital product platform.
Focus on creating digital products: While both platforms can host and sell digital products, Kahana is designed to help creators collaborate and create digital products quickly and easily. Kahana focuses on speed and simplicity, allowing creators to curate existing content and create a hub to monetize it.
Dynamic content: Kahana allows creators to update their collection of knowledge quickly and easily by adding or removing content files, videos, and more. This means that creators can keep their content up-to-date and relevant, which is important for keeping subscribers engaged. In contrast, Kartra is more focused on static digital products and downloads.
Security: Kahana has built-in security features that prevent subscribers from downloading or copying the content. This makes it more difficult for people to plagiarize or steal content, which can be a concern for creators.

Overall, people may choose Kahana over Kartra because it offers a simpler and more accessible platform for creating and monetizing digital products, with a focus on dynamic creation and collaboration.

Kartra Pricing

Kartra's pricing starts at $99 per month for its Starter Plan, which includes up to 2,500 contacts, 50 GB bandwidth, and limited features.
The Silver Plan costs $199 per month and includes up to 12,500 contacts, 125 GB bandwidth, and more advanced features.
The Gold Plan costs $299 per month and includes up to 25,000 contacts, 200 GB bandwidth, and even more advanced features.
Finally, the Platinum Plan costs $499 per month and includes up to 50,000 contacts, 500 GB bandwidth, and the most advanced features.

Kahana Pricing

Signing up for Kahana is completely free, and you won't have to pay any upfront fees or provide credit card or payment information, even with the free plan. However, it's important to note that Kahana will take a 5% commission from your earnings (excluding Stripe fees) if you monetize your hubs and generate income.

Kahana's free tier is designed to help users start using the platform. This tier allows you to create up to two hubs and invite an unlimited number of collaborators. You can also set up payment processing to monetize your content. However, the free tier does have some limitations, such as storage restrictions. If you require more advanced features, unlimited hubs, or higher limits, you can upgrade to one of Kahana's paid plans.

Getting featured

Kahana's Explore page showcases a thoughtfully curated collection of outstanding hubs built on the Kahana platform. This page serves the purpose of highlighting the quality and diversity of content that creators can produce using Kahana and helping users discover new and captivating hubs to explore.

The Featured Hubs page covers a broad range of topics, from business and marketing to health and wellness, and more. Users can browse through the selection, preview the content, and subscribe to the hubs that pique their interest. Additionally, creators have the opportunity to suggest their own hubs for consideration to be featured on the page.

You can use Kahana for free forever, without incurring any charges, even if you decide to remain on the free plan and do not acquire any subscribers for your hub. Create a free Kahana account.